"A [preacher] who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they are necessarily reflected in his [preaching]." — BXVI

29 May 2013

Calling All Catholic Education Nerds!

Next semester I will teaching a course at Notre Dame Seminary called, "Teaching and Preaching the Word of God."

The course is designed to teach seminarians who to teach the faith to children/teens/adults.

The General Directory of Catechesis and the USCCB's United States Catholic Catechism for Adults will feature prominently, but we still need a good book or two on theory/method in faith formation pedagogy.

Any suggestions?

P.S. Thomas Groome's work has been mentioned as a possibility. . .but I'm pretty sure his stuff (or some really bad uses of his stuff) has been partly responsibile for the collapse of good faith formation in the last 40 yrs.

12 comments:

I'm more inclined to blame the (mis)application of Groome's work than his methodology, although he himself does hold some fairly unorthodox views. His latest book, Will There Be Faith?, is a good overview of his methodology.

I can recommend "Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis" by Cointet et al. I own and have glanced through "The Mystery We Proclaim: Catechesis for the Third Millennium" by Kelly et al, but haven't read it yet. Both are good examples of the "divine pedagogy" school or catechesis.

I'd also recommend some reading from the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, especially no. 75, which has some direct application to our understanding of all catechesis.

To quote one of country's great founders who is perfectly in line with our new Pope:

“I had come to realize the importance of the Nation, and of shared, communal, social responsibility, to be held as equally important as individual concerns. The elderly, the widowed, newly married couples, the poor, the unemployed, disbanded soldiers and children, who would be required to attend school, must be provided for from state funds. And all this support is not the nature of charity, but of a right.”

Fr. Powell, here's a couple of titles that might work out for you: "The Pedagogy of God" edited by Caroline Farey and Sr. Johanna Paruch, "O Timothy" by Michael McKeating, and "The Mystery We Proclaim" by Francis Kelly.

Please don't use Groome. I think your assessment of his legacy is pretty accurate.

Fr. Philip - I know that your Dominican sisters up in Nashville are big proponents of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. I have no idea what the readings for your level of instruction might be...but as Dominicans in the trenches they may be a good resource.

CGS is really good for children. What I'm looking for is a college-level text to use in teaching seminarians how to teach the faith. In other words, a book on faith formation pedagogy: teaching teachers how to teach.